September 11, 1997

Networks Comply, but Barely, on Children's Shows

By LAWRIE MIFFLIN

A nourishing new world of children's television was supposed to
begin this week, with the nation's broadcast stations required by
Federal regulations to carry three hours a week of educational shows
for viewers under 16.

But that world, it turns out, is often thin on nourishment--and
not even very new.

A look at the fall schedule, which begins on Saturday, raises
serious questions about how sincerely the broadcast networks have
accepted the challenge of producing creative, engaging shows that
include truly educational elements.

The first batch of new shows intended to comply with the rule is a
mixed bag of reruns from PBS or cable, a few innovative shows that
appear to have the new mandate at heart, and some entertainment shows
with an overlay of educational material slapped on like shellac.

CBS, for example, offers "The Weird Al Show," starring the
pop-song parodist Weird Al Yankovic, who says that educational
messages never entered his mind when he first set out to produce a
children's show based on his routine. ABC has retooled
"101 Dalmatians" to include sentimental lessons about friendship
and responsibility. Fox has no new shows at all, and the most-watched
network, NBC, continues to say that "N.B.A. Inside Stuff" is designed
to teach "life lessons," not just promote basketball.

Peggy Charren, the fairy
godmother to the new Federal rule, is not buying that.
"I doubt any parent or educator will look at that and say:
'What a breathtakingly good
schedule for the No. 1 network.
They're really taking their obligation to children seriously this
time!' " said Ms. Charren, whose
now-disbanded advocacy group,
Action for Children's Television,
led the lobbying that resulted in
passage of the Children's Television
Act in 1990.

Stations' response -- calling "The
Jetsons" or "Leave It to Beaver" educational or scheduling educational
shows at 6 A.M. -- provoked the new, stricter Federal Communications
Commission rules, passed in 1996 to take effect this year.

John Miller, the executive in charge of
NBC's teen-age programming, said the
network has intensified the collaborations
with educational consultants that it requires of its producers, in an
effort to come closer to the spirit of the rule. Those
consultants, he said, do not merely review
scripts, as in the past, but are involved at
the conception of each episode.

"We took the criticism to heart and
have aggressively tried to add more educational content into the
shows," he said, referring to "N.B.A. Inside Stuff" and the
teen-age sitcoms that NBC also labels
educational: the new "City Guys," about
buddies in an urban school, "Hang Time,"
about a girl on a boys' basketball team,
and "Saved By The Bell: The New Class."

Only a tiny fraction of television shows
specifically address teen-agers, and Mr.
Miller said that while the other networks
aim at younger children, NBC has tried to
confront issues that vex adolescents.

Such issues -- peer pressure, self-esteem, troubles with parents
or siblings or in school -- have become a
grab bag for the vast majority of
shows that are labeled educational,
whether provided by the networks to
their affiliates or packaged by syndicators for sale to individual
stations. Very few dare to tackle curricular
topics like literature, history, science, math or geography. And
except for several one-minute segments on
CBS, there is no news or current-events show for children.

"My concern is that they'll use
these little formulas and will not
really try to improve anything or try
new things," said Kathryn C. Montgomery, president of the Center for
Media Education, a research and advocacy group. "I'm worried that
they'll do the bare minimum and
hope the public complaints will eventually go away."

Complaints arose because so
many children's shows were cartoons that were violent, were blatantly
created to sell toys and other merchandise, or both. In response,
the 1990 law was passed requiring educational programs on broadcast
stations. (The law applies only to broadcasters, not to cable, because
Federal licenses to use the public airwaves are granted free, on
condition that stations meet public service obligations.)

But broadcasters complain that it
is difficult to make educational
shows that children want to watch.
And children today have plenty of
temptation to change channels, notably to two cable rivals,
Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network.

"There's no sense putting on programs to educate and inform
kids if kids won't watch them," said Margaret Loesch, vice chairman
of Fox Kids Worldwide, a joint venture of
Fox Broadcasting and Saban Entertainment that offers "Mighty Morphin'
Power Rangers," and "Goosebumps." Trying to Do
The Minimum

Still, companies with proven track
records in producing entertainment
for children -- Fox, Disney, Warner
Brothers -- might have been expected to be the most imaginative in
weaving educational content into
television shows. By and large, they
have instead met the bare minimum
requirements of the new rule.

Fox, the Nielsen ratings leader on
Saturday morning among children
aged 2 to 11, is meeting most of its
educational quota with reruns of a
seven-year-old cartoon called "Bobby's World," broadcasting them in
most cities at 7 on weekday mornings (2 P.M. in New York City) and 8
A.M. on Saturdays. Only one other
educational show invades the gang of
superheroes on Fox's lucrative Saturday lineup, the Emmy
Award-winning cartoon about a boy and his
family, "Life with Louie."

And the WB network, which is providing 19 hours of children's
shows to its stations this season, for weekday
afternoons and Saturday mornings,
is meeting the F.C.C. requirement
with one new animated half-hour
called "Channel Umptee-3" and the
umpteenth reruns of "The New Adventures of Captain Planet," a show
that first appeared on Turner Broadcasting's TBS cable network in
1990.

While ABC has made an ambitious
effort -- coming up with five new
Saturday shows, all designated E/I
(the label used for educational or
informational programs) -- the network, owned by Disney, has also
played it safe, for the most part
simply layering educational messages onto tried-and-true properties
like "101 Dalmatians" and "Winnie
the Pooh."

An exception is "Science Court," a
cartoon show in which scientific concepts are used to explain
amusing cases that come before a judge
whose voice is provided by the comedian Paula Poundstone. Ms.
Montgomery said the show "breaks
new ground in the way it combines
humor with educational content."
Yet ABC has scheduled it at 12:30
P.M., a time when it will often be pre-empted for sports events.

NBC's shows for teen-agers may
also be pre-empted frequently for
sports, because the network will not
move the very successful Saturday
edition of "Today." Some NBC stations, including WNBC in New York,
have a local edition of "Today" following the national one, so in many
places the "Teen NBC" lineup will
not start until 10:30 A.M. and will end
as late as 1:30 P.M.

And CBS, trying to mimic the "Today" ratings success with "CBS
News Saturday Morning," will interrupt its children's block for two
hours. The news show, with former
Representative Susan Molinari as
co-host, will be on from 9 to 11 A.M. in
most places.

But in its three hours of
educational programs, CBS has
dared to try a few new things. These
include "The Sports Illustrated for
Kids Show," developed from the
magazine of the same name, which
has been praised by educators, and
the unlikely sounding "Wheel of Fortune 2000," based on the adult
game show. The "Wheel" show has a computer-animated co-host named
Cyber Lucy and a Web site that
allows viewers to enter the game.
Real children spin the wheel and try
to spell out not just words but answers to questions.

CBS also has revived one of the
most successful PBS shows of the
last decade, "Ghostwriter," a live-action show about teen-age sleuths
and a ghost who uses reading and
spelling tricks to help them, under
the title "The New Ghostwriter Mysteries."
'All Our Shows
Are Educational'

And then there's Weird Al, whose
parody of the grim rap video "Gangsta's Paradise," called "Living
in an Amish Paradise," entranced MTV audiences last year.

Mr. Yankovic, at a summer news
briefing, said the show was not initially meant to be educational:
"And then CBS said, 'Well all of our shows are educational.' So I
said: 'You know what? Now it's educational.' "

In a more recent interview, Mr.
Yankovic said, "I joke about it, but
we ended up taking the educational
elements very seriously. Some might
even call it overkill."

Indeed, the consultants have added
club-you-over-the-head messages
("Today's lesson is: Don't follow
people who can get you into trouble
-- think for yourself!") that are intoned at the start of the show
by a mock-serious announcer and woven
awkwardly into an otherwise zany
half-hour of physical comedy.

"The Weird Al Show" has the flavor of something children
might embrace without (or despite) its rudimentary educational
elements. That is a trick all the broadcasters are
trying to learn, for they have a very
real fear of losing most of the children's audience to cable.

Busy worrying about that competition, broadcasters largely ignored
the Children's Television Act's mandate to meet children's educational
needs. Now the advocacy groups that
worked for the law are, for the most
part, holding their fire on criticizing
new shows. They hope to encourage
the broadcasters to keep working at
developing better ones.

"Some shows will be good, some
bad, but I hope people don't throw up
their hands and say, 'See? This made
no difference, it was a waste of
time,' " Ms. Charren said.

"The first
year of an effort to clean up rivers
doesn't make them free of all pollution. But if we said, 'See, I
knew these laws were useless,' we would never
clean up the rivers."